The Meaningful Science Consortium has been established to provide an instructional development system (IDS) to the Chicago Public Schools. The consortium is composed of four institutions that are committed to science education reform: Northwestern University, The Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), It's About Time, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

This website is currently under construction.  Please check back for updates and contact us if you do not find the information you need. 

NEW:

We have added a page for questions and concerns that have been raised in discussions with schools.  Please check the "Questions and Concerns" link on the left. 

High-level Overview of the Approach

Guided by the Illinois Learning Standards and the Prairie State Achievement examination, our goals are to:

• Give every Chicago high school student educational experiences sufficient to prepare them for college-level academic work. 
• Provide every student with the understanding of science content and scientific practices that they will need to make the important personal and civic decisions they will face in their lifetimes.

Historically, Chicago Public School students have not had the same opportunities to achieve those goals as students in other settings.  The essence of our approach is to:

• Work collaboratively and supportively with teachers and administrators to draw on existing strengths and build new strengths throughout the school in order to support effective instruction. 

While the Meaningful Science Consortium is offering schools a strong, research-based science curriculum, we are not a curriculum project.  Our mission is capacity-building.  We will work closely with schools through five key capacity-building activities:

Professional development.  Drawing on decades of experience in science education reform, we offer professional development that supports teachers in enhancing both content and pedagogical understanding.  The professional development is tightly tied to the curriculum, so that teachers’ experiences in workshops have immediate practical value while building knowledge and skills that will have value throughout their career. 

Coaching.  Coaching is a process by which teachers can work closely with a trusted professional to improve their practice.  Drawing on research and firsthand experience, the goal of our coaching effort is to help teachers translate what they learn elsewhere into classroom practice by:

1. Working directly with individual teachers during planning, teaching, and reflection.
2. establishing a safe environment in which teachers can strive to improve practice without fear of negative criticism or evaluation.
3. helping teachers develop collaboration and leadership skills to support the work of their colleagues.
4. facilitating professional networking for teachers within and across school sites.

 

Assessment.  Assessment is properly viewed as an instructional tool to help professional educators make informed decisions about instruction.  We will develop assessments that will enable teachers to adjust their instruction to the needs of their students, and our coaching and professional development will help teachers to use assessments to inform their teaching.  We will also join with others to create assessments that will enable us to judge our own progress toward our goals of preparing students for college and life beyond. 

Leadership Development.  Instructional improvement is an organizational process that must be supported through leadership.  Through our professional development and coaching programs, we will help schools develop leadership teams that are focused on the challenges and opportunities that are specific to science. 

Professional Networking.  We will offer teachers and administrators the opportunity to join together in professional networks around instructional improvement both within school buildings and across CPS.  We will create these opportunities in a variety of formats including both face-to-face and online, to match the needs and interests of today’s diverse population of CPS teachers. 

Curriculum structure and emphasis

Our curriculum approach has four key elements:

Meaningful science.  Our curriculum approach emphasizes teaching science in meaningful contexts for two reasons:

• Meaningful contexts demonstrate to students the value of what they are learning.
• Meaningful contexts help students to learn how to apply what they are learning in context, rather than just in an artificial assessment context. 

Sequence and Structure.  Our three-year curriculum sequence encompasses content and process goals in all the science disciplines in the Illinois Learning Standards—biology, chemistry, physics, and earth/environmental science—in a sequence that builds understanding systematically within and across years.  The sequence begins with an interdisciplinary year of environmental and earth science, followed by a year of fundamental chemistry and physics, concluding with a capstone year of contemporary biology. 

Case-based, inquiry approach.  All three years are taught using a case-based approach in which students apply what they are learning in the context of real world issues, and all three teach students both the content and the practices of the scientific disciplines.

Integrated technology.  All our materials, including the literacy materials, make integral use of technology.  The materials are technology-integrated not technology-dominated.  Technology is used where it can provide students with uniquely effective opportunities for learning. 

Support for literacy.  Our materials will include additional supports for literacy development in the context of the science courses.  We will provide materials and strategies using a research-based reading to learn approach that will enable students to both develop their literacy skills and improve their science learning through the use of those skills.  These reading to learn strategies will be a primary focus of our professional development. 

Recent work with urban students, teachers,  schools, districts

The Meaningful Science Consortium includes the authors and development teams for all the programs used in the three-year sequence.  The organizations in the partnership have between 10 and 48 years of experience supporting the implementation of their programs in urban schools through professional development and other capacity-building activities.  What follows is a brief summary of their recent experiences supporting instructional reform in urban school districts:

Northwestern University has been working with CPS teachers for more than five years offering coaching and PD for the 9th grade Investigations in Environmental Science course.  They have also engaged in long-term coaching partnerships with Clemente and Fenger High Schools around instructional improvement.

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) has been offering professional development for site-based leadership teams in support of science curriculum reform through the National Academy for Curriculum Leadership since 2001.  All together, 34 school districts from across the USA have participated, including San Diego, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, LA Unified, and Boston. 

University of Illinois-Chicago has been engaged on research on support for literacy development in middle and high school science for more than 5 years.  They are currently supporting the implementation of reading-to-learn strategies in the Investigations in Environmental Science curriculum at Clemente H.S.

It’s About Time has supported large-scale science curriculum reform in many urban districts through coaching and PD.  These include LA, NYC, Seattle, Denver, Boston, and Cincinnati.  They are currently partnering with LA in support of district-wide (450 teachers, 45,000 students) implementation of It’s About Time’s Integrated Coordinated Science curriculum at the ninth grade.